Thursday, 14 January 2016

“Feminism: The advocacy of women’s rights on the grounds of the equality of the sexes."

“Egalitarianism: The doctrine that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities.”

The two quotes above are sourced from the Oxford Dictionary. On the
face of it, feminism and egalitarianism appear to converge. Indeed, it
is not unusual to hear feminists appeal to this dictionary definition
whenever they are challenged. I will call this the “reasonable person”
defence, e.g., What reasonable person could possibly disagree? The point
being, they can't. Not if they want to remain reasonable in the eyes of
others,

But similarly, what reasonable person could disagree with
egalitarianism? Both premises are highly reasonable. But as numerous
studies and surveys have demonstrated, a majority of people support
egalitarian values but do not identify as feminists.[1] [2] [3] [4]
What's going on? Are these people confused, ignorant, or both?!

Neither.

It seems the non-feminist (not anti-feminist) egalitarian majority
either know or intuitively suspect a crucial difference between the goals
of egalitarianism and feminism. Unfortunately, looking to dictionary
definitions does not help us articulate what these differences are.

A visit to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
gives us a more detailed description of both concepts. The opening
preamble to the egalitarian chapter[5] dovetails nicely with the
dictionary definition above. The feminist chapter, however, quickly
diverges from the dictionary definition, running off into various
strands where the key theme is internal disagreement within feminism
about what feminism is. It takes just over 3,000 words before the term
patriarchy first appears but when it does, it is neither problematic nor
contested.

“Feminism, as liberation struggle, must exist apart from and as a
part of the larger struggle to eradicate domination in all its forms. We
must understand that patriarchal domination shares an ideological
foundation with racism
and other forms of group oppression, and that there is no hope that it
can be eradicated while these systems remain intact. This knowledge
should consistently inform the direction of feminist theory and
practice. (hooks 1989, 22)”[6]

Here is the first hint of what differentiates feminism from
egalitarianism. You will note there is no mention of equality by hooks;
the goal is “liberation” from “patriarchal domination.”

Ask a feminist what feminism means and you are likely to get one of
two responses. The "reasonable person" defence is one, while the other,
is what I will call the "atomistic dodge." This entails the feminist
stating that feminism is not a monolithic movement, its aims being too
complex to pin down[7]. This position personifies intersectional
feminism. Note how the descriptions contradict one another. It is easy
to get lost in this equivocal maze.

So, rather than trying to discern the differences between feminist
factions, I asked what they had in common. The results help us see the
difference between egalitarianism and feminism.

In 1963, the liberal feminist Betty Friedan published a book about a
“problem with no name.” Seven years later, radical feminists named it
“patriarchy." Patriarchy was conceived of as the underlying structure
which facilitated men's oppression of women; “a system characterized by
power, dominance, hierarchy and competition, a system that [could not] be reformed but only ripped out root and branch.”[8]

This moment marked a fundamental change in strategy as feminists
shifted from a liberal policy of achieving equality through reform, to a
radical strategy of trying to dismantle patriarchy. Around this time,
Friedan was unceremoniously kicked out of the organisation she had
founded because she wasn't radical enough[9]. Since this time,
patriarchy has remained central to all subsequent waves of feminism.
While it is true that the different factions of feminisms have slightly
different conceptions of patriarchy, they all agree on the following:

Patriarchy is a socially constructed phenomenon which enforces notions of sex and gender that equate to male supremacy and female inferiority[10] [11].

Patriarchy is the mechanism by which all men institutionally oppress all women[12].
All feminisms are united in the fight against patriarchy (if little else)[13].

But what is patriarchy? Does it even exist? There is a dearth of
research on feminist premises which values critical thinking over
critical theory, though this is starting to change.[14] Both the
existence and origin of patriarchy are assumed by feminists rather than
explored, yet the flawed, circular logic of the three premises above
represent the ideological bedrock of all feminisms—from radical to
intersectional—and social 'justice' activism today.

The feminist concept of patriarchy is embellished from the
anthropological observation that in many cultures men appear to hold
more social, economic and political 'power' compared to females.
Feminists assume men grasp for power and resources to dominate women
because they hate them (misogyny). My research suggests patriarchy is
vastly more complex than feminists have ever imagined and that women
have just as much influence in its structure and maintenance as men. As
Mary Wollstonecraft noted:

“Ladies are not afraid to drive in their own carriages to the doors of cunning men."[15]

Patriarchy is a system which can both oppress and liberate, both male and female. It is the human fitness landscape.

And here lies the rub for feminisms today. Heterosexual men and women
are attracted to one another precisely because of their stereotypical
sexual traits. In fact, they are not stereotypical, they are
archetypical. Humans are a sexually reproducing species. Men and women
have shaped one another physically and psychologically over millions of
years via the process of sexual selection. In turn, we create culture as
our fitness landscape. There is a simple dynamic to this: Men want
power and resources because women want men who have power and resources.

This isn't because women are selfish gold diggers or men shallow
aesthetes. Sexual dimorphism and the sexual division of labour are not
patriarchically imposed tyrannies. They are an elegant and pragmatic
solution for a species who have uniquely helpless infants with
unprecedentedly long childhoods. This dynamic between the sexes, of team
work and strong pair bonds, is one of the foundations of our success as
a species. The survival of offspring is at the centre of this—whether
we choose to have children or not. The sexes simply cannot be understood
except in light of one another and the reason we evolved to cooperate; offspring. It will continue to be so for as long as we remain human.

The feminist legacy of social constructionism and patriarchy theory
has taken the capricious, delightful and, yes, sometimes cruel battle of
the sexes and turned it into a war of attrition. The circular logic
also has feminism devouring itself from within.

This past year, one of the the most iconic women of the 20th
century, the radical feminist and intellectual, Germaine Greer, was
denied a platform to speak at a UK university.[16] Her crime? Greer does
not reject biology wholesale and, while she respects the egalitarian
rights of men who want to transition and live and love as a woman, she insists this doesn't actually make them biologically women; they remain trans-women.
For this she was stripped of the right to speak, verbally abused and
labelled a bigot. The middle class, socialist feminist Laurie Penny went
so far as to cast Greer in the same light as people who want to murder
homosexuals.

Why should women mind? In 2014 a trans-woman in the US was awarded
“working mother of the year” despite neither giving birth or being
primary carer to her children.[17] This year, in 2016, Caitlyn Jenner,
who has been living as a woman for a few months, will be awarded “woman
of the year” ahead of countless women of substance who have made
extraordinary accomplishments while facing actual selection pressures unique to their biological sex.
Trans-activists are lobbying for a change of language by midwives to
refer to people giving birth as “pregnant persons” not women.[18] At a
time when people debate whether a woman drinking the odd glass of wine
in pregnancy is child abuse, a trans-women took powerful (not socially constructed) hormones
to stimulate lactation[19]. A discussion of the nutritional value of
the milk extends to the trans-mother reporting the milk is thick and
creamy, which seems to identify it as something other than human breast
milk, which is highly dilute and low in fat.

Feminists frequently claim that we live in a rape culture, even though rape and all violent crime in
the West is in steady decline and rape prosecution statistics are on a
par with other crimes at over 50%.[20] [21] In the US there is a
feminist movement on college campuses to lower the threshold of proof in
rape prosecution trials. It is staggering to think these educated
people have forgotten terrible lessons within living memory; the bitter crop of strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

To balk at this is not hatred or phobia but healthy scepticism. We
are all equal before the law under egalitarianism. This is not the case
with feminism. It places ideology before people. Individual rights and
choices are “problematic”.[22] Women like myself who point out the
logical inconsistencies and totalitarian mission creep of feminism are
labelled anti-feminist and anti-woman; as if “feminist” and “woman” were
synonyms. They aren't. Feminists are identified by their politics,
not their sex or gender. They do not speak for women or the majority of
egalitarians in society; they speak only for themselves. The dictionary
definition of feminism is in serious need of a rewrite.

The egalitarian quest for equality is tangential to feminism. So...which are you?

Monday, 11 January 2016

I just found out and I’m somewhat in shock, as I didn’t see that
coming at all. Lemmy yes, but then I knew he was ill, and had looked
like death on legs for years. Bowie, I thought, would live another 15
years at least. Or possibly forever, the way gods are supposed to.

How do we mourn today?
How do we mark the passing of a great, illuminating soul? We change our
facebook profile picture. We post a one-sentence tweet. Then we go back
to our glowing screens. There is so much war and disaster and novelty
and death these days there’s no time for anything more. And besides, we all know another one will be coming along any moment now.

As
I get older I’m beginning to glimpse what it’s like to be old, with a
funeral every week of someone you once laughed with and loved. But it’s
not the people I slept with yet, it’s the heroes I grew up with, the
figures of beauty and genius I looked to as beacons of wonder and a
higher plain of existence, signposts to a richer, deeper world beyond
the narrow mundanity of family life and small town stagnation.

I
grew up before the internet, when there was no portal to the group mind
of the western world a finger motion away. To be an outsider finding
another human being sharing ANY of the same passions and ideas as
yourself was the rarest and most treasurable thing in the world, and you
could go your whole life without meeting one. Books were your safest
bet, if you were lucky enough to find one which told the truth. So for
someone to break through the carefully maintained inanity of the TV and
the Radio and use those mediums to bridge the gap between millions with something
challenging, alien, pure, heartfelt, dangerous and dissident was an
extraordinary and seemingly impossible act. I sometimes wonder if it’s actually
possible for people younger than me to appreciate just how hard it was
to make that happen, and what it therefore meant to those who were touched by it.

In
the age of reality TV and YouTube sensations, ‘fame’ doesn’t really
mean any of what it once did. We really should have another word for
karaoke contestants and celebrity chefs leaking their own sex tapes to
eke out one more week of recognition. You’re not truly famous in my book
unless people know your name a hundred years later. You’re certainly
not Great.

David Bowie was famous because David Bowie was
truly great: like The Beatles and The Stones before him, Bob Dylan and
Billie Holiday and Miles Davis, his songs are just as loved and played
and celebrated today as they ever were, almost 50 years on, and changed
pretty much everything that followed, both in music and popular culture.
I won’t even try to name all the lesser cul-de-sac acts that sprang up
in his wake, all the New Romantics and Goths, the Art-Rockers and Gender
Benders: none of them achieved anything comparable to their idol either
in breadth or popularity, and none of them would have - or could have -
existed without him.

What was his gift? What made him special? What did he do first, before anyone else?

Bowie
was the first magpie of rock n roll, the first to take on whole styles
of music as nothing more than colours for him to paint his own unique
creations with, and he did that all the way through his life, touring
whatever excited him in the moment from folk and rock and plastic soul
all the way through krautrock and ambient and jazz and drum&bass,
but turning all of them into simply ‘Bowie’. The songs Space Oddity, Ashes To Ashes and Hallo Spaceboy
are all thematically linked, all directly referring to the same character, though
each is more than a decade away from the one next to it, and in a
different genre of music. And every one of them a hit.

David
Bowie was the first rocker to explicitly make his life’s work the wearing of a
series of masks and personas - starting with Ziggy Stardust, he forced
the audience to step back from the ecstasy of the moment and see an
artificial creation - an ‘Actor’ before them playing a part the man behind the mask was writing. In doing so he deepened and expanded the vocabulary and possibilities of popular music, adding a knowing detachment and artificiality that would have been unimaginable in rock n roll before he came along. At a time when
Showaddywaddy, The Carpenters and The Bay City Rollers were his
competition in the charts, he was introducing high-art ideas from
experimental theatre and other mediums into rock music, such as
utilizing William S Burroughs’ “cut-up” method of writing novels for
writing lyrics.

If that wasn’t enough, he was also the first openly gay
pop star (even though he wasn’t really, perhaps just a little bi from
time to time, though no-one knew that then). In his unprecedented
androgyny, and still shocking antics onstage like simulating oral sex every night with his guitarist Mick Ronson back in the Ziggy days, he
kicked open the door for all the Boy George’s, Antony Hegarty’s and
Marilyn Manson’s to saunter through years later, though of course it goes
without saying none of them have created anything like the enormously
varied yet immediately recognizable body of work he put together, and
never will.

I don’t see my family all that often
but my mother often rings me up to tell me of the death of some person
from the past she swears I once knew, some distant aunt or uncle, some
old family friend whose house I once stayed at, long, long ago. And I
have to tell her over and over again I don’t remember who they are, I don’t know who she’s talking about. They mean nothing to me.

If
I was writing all this for a man I’d never met just because he was
someone I once saw on Top Of The Pops and on the cover of some
magazines, someone who made a few nice songs I hummed along with, that
would be a sad thing to confess. But if that person was a creature of flesh
and blood who somehow came to symbolize, for millions of people, boundless experimentation,
intelligence and curiosity in the dumbest of all art-forms, constant movement and
change, agelessness, uncompromising artistic vision and endless
possibilities, a land of pure thought above the mire we can visit every
time we put on one of his records... well then that would be the most
natural thing in the world.

The Librarian

“I have no doubt that, someday, the distortion of truth by the radical feminists of our time will be seen to have been the greatest intellectual crime of the second half of the twentieth century. At the present time, however, we still live under the aegis of that crime, and calling attention to it is an act of great moral courage” - Professor Howard S. Schwartz, of Oakland University in Michigan, USA, 2001